Forsyth attorney arrested in Hall County on sex-offender warrant

Richard Parsons, a Forsyth County attorney, surrendered to the Hall County Jail on Thursday and was being held without bond after a Forsyth County warrant accused him of failing to register as a sex offender.

Forsyth County sheriff’s investigators said Parsons had listed a Forsyth County address as his residence, but detectives determined he was not actually living there when they checked. That finding triggered the warrant and put a local lawyer at the center of a case that reaches beyond one arrest and into the way sex-offender compliance is monitored across county lines.

Georgia law requires registered sex offenders to register with the sheriff in the county where they live, or move to, within 72 hours after release, parole, probation or entry into the state. The same law also requires an in-person renewal within 72 hours before an offender’s birthday each year. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation maintains the state’s sex-offender registry as the central repository under O.C.G.A. 42-1-12, with other agencies updating it as information changes.

Hall County officials said their SORT unit checks where sex offenders live and work to make sure they register within the required time frame and to verify compliance with state law. That system is meant to catch changes quickly, but this case shows how an offender can still come under scrutiny only after a residence check exposes a mismatch between the address on record and where the person is actually living.

WSB-TV Channel 2 Action News reported that Parsons had been a registered sex offender since the end of 2025 and that his first arrest came in November 2025 on a child molestation charge. Registry records cited in that report said the underlying sex offense conviction involved enticing a minor in New Jersey. The report also said the website for Parsons Law, LLC was no longer active.

The State Bar of Georgia listed Parsons as active and in good standing as of April 16, but the bar says attorneys can face discipline or disbarment after criminal convictions and other misconduct. For Forsyth residents, the case underscores a basic public-safety question: whether county and state tracking systems are catching violations quickly enough when a registered offender’s address does not match reality.